Page 30 - ELG1810 Oct Issue 461

RESOURCES .

The Power
The Power

of Storytelling
of Storytelling

Narratives are a powerful teaching tool. Put them in coursebooks, says Terry Phillips

hy should we use narratives in a foreign language can make a valuable Critical thinking
with language learners? The contribution to independent learning, so the Narratives work very well with two
use of continuing stories in motivational power of narrative is important. elements of so-called 21st-century skill. First,
WELT coursebooks has fallen A good narrative draws the reader or inferencing or ‘reading between the lines’.
out of fashion, but this seems a great shame. listener into the story, and, if well-written, A good set of True/False statements can
Narratives can be a very powerful language into the lives of the characters. Students tease out whether students can go beyond
learning tool, in so many ways. want to know how the action evolves, and what they actually read or hear to what can
what the protagonist and antagonist do next. be inferred. Ideally, the statements should not
Reading and listening It is rare in the emotional desert of the repeat anything in the narrative, but get the
Let’s deal with the obvious first. ELT classroom that students are genuinely students to go deeper.
Narratives are perfect for practising involved in presentation or practice For example, if the narrative contains a
prediction, the key receptive skill. In L1, activities, but this involvement is a natural brave action by one of the characters, a good
a reader or listener is always ahead of the by-product of using narratives. T/F statement is ‘X is brave’, but only if that
text. Receivers predict, in their heads, statement is not spelled out in the narrative.
what is coming next, read or listen to the Speaking and writing Secondly, we can ask students to use logical
next section and correct their hypothesis So narratives get students motivated and reasoning to explain why something happened
accordingly. actively reading or listening. But they can or what will happen if Character A does X.
We must develop this skill in our students, also be used as a springboard for developing The accuracy of the answer shows us how
and narratives enable the teacher to speaking and writing. much of the narrative has been understood.
constantly check that students are, indeed, The most obvious link to speaking
ahead of the text. practice is role play, in which students act Presenting and practising grammar
out scenes from the narrative, or predict A narrative offers perfect opportunities
Independent learning scenes which might happen next. for showing the complex interaction of past
A second powerful benefit of narratives For writing, the easiest task is summarizing tenses, such as when past continuous or past
is that, by definition, they have a story a chapter, but we can also develop creative perfect are required in English.
arc, which means that we can provide writing by asking students to write the But when we bring in summarising we
hooks (e.g. What happens next?) to keep the summary from the point of view of one of can also ask students to use present tenses.
learner interested. We know that reading the characters involved in the events. Synopses of stories and films are normally
written in the present, so this is not an
artificial class activity.
Once we see narrative as more than just
‘reading for pleasure’, many activities come
into view in a more effective way than if we
base context on sentence level examples. To
name but a few … pronoun and possessive
adjective references, use of articles, adverbial
phrases of time, place and method, etc.

Presenting and practising syntax
The possible exercises listed under reading
and listening (above) which test prediction
skills, for example, What is the next word/
phrase/sentence? can only be completed with
full accuracy if students have followed the
narrative. And they have also decoded the
syntax up to the point where you stop the
sentence or paragraph, for example, A goes
to … (B’s house) because she wants to (borrow
some money).
To sum up, most ELT coursebooks no
longer feature running narratives, but they
are such a powerful teaching and learning
tool, perhaps it is time for some brave writer –
and publisher – to take the plunge and bring
them back.
30 October 2018